Business is increasingly global, so ethical concerns are becoming more important in terms of cross-national business and negotiations.
- David De Cremer
Do the ethics of a person’s negotiating tactics differ when they negotiate with someone from a different country? A new study co-authored at University of Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that they do.
While some prior studies have looked at the relative negotiating ethics of different nationalities, the new study, entitled “How ethically would Americans and Chinese negotiate? The effect of intra-cultural versus inter-cultural negotiations”, published in the Journal of Business Ethics looks at a significant new factor: it finds that the nationality of the counterparty to negotiations can make people prefer the use of more or less ethical strategies, particularly in areas such as false promises and inappropriate information gathering.
“Business is increasingly global, so ethical concerns are becoming more important in terms of cross-national business and negotiations,” said co-author David De Cremer, KPMG Professor of Management Studies at Cambridge Judge. “This study shows that the other party’s nationality can affect the ethics of negotiating tactics, and this has important implications.”
The study is co-authored by Yu Yang of ShanghaiTech University, David De Cremer of Cambridge Judge Business School, and Chao Wang of the University of Illinois.
The study looks specifically at negotiations between Americans and Chinese, and doesn’t compile data involving other nationalities – but it suggests that the findings are not restricted to negotiations between US and Chinese nationals.
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Image: Fingers crossed
Credit: Public domain
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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